A March Off the Beaten Path

Szimpla Kert. Or in Hungarian, Simple Garden. Yet "simple" was the furthest from what I stubbled across one late night near the Jewish Quarter of Budapest, Hungary.

From the outside, Szimpla Kert looked to be a quaint, dark and quiet bar, with a dimply lit front door and a small business sign written in cursive. But it was nothing like I expected. It was a Saturday night and the inside was packed body to body. The inside was foggy and dark, lit only by colorful light bulbs projected at the walls, decorative light strands spanning across the ceiling and vintage floor lamps scattered in brick walled off rooms jutting out from the main entrance. The fog wasn't that of cigarette or cigar smoke and it took me a little while to locate the hotel-reception-like desk that was renting out flavored hookah.

Before overwhelming myself with the scenery, I rented one and squeezed into a picnic bench next to a few groups; one older couple and other younger students. We began to talk about the history of this "ruin pub" and the many others like it. Many years after Budapest’s Jewish Quarter was destroyed in World War II, people bought broken down abandoned buildings, cleaned but did not renovate, and invited retro artists to decorate the space with 70s accents.

We were sitting in the oldest of these pubs.

Disco balls, massive pig ornaments and psychedelic neon light fixtures hung from the wood-framed ceiling. Unbalanced concrete staircases led to upstairs bars, a couch made from an old bathtub, and ivy and graffiti covered walls. Out back hung a large projection screen that played black and white film, some of Charlie Chaplin. It overlooked an old, stripped down Communist car sitting in the packed beer garden. Finally a 'garden' comes into the picture.

In the morning, the space was unrecognizable and I could finally see where I was placing my feet. Street vendors offered taste testings of their homemade Hungarian products: honey, chili, baked goods, produce and my ultimate favorite BudaPesto sauce. And rather than smoke and thick beer, the aroma in the morning was much more calming. I took a slice of apple bread to a bar upstairs for a cup of tea. Although quieter, the visibility of the eccentric space was much louder than the night before.

Szimpla Kert was anything but "simple". Flashy, cluttered, ornamented, adorned, embellished or anything but simple.